Collected Works (Vol. III)

EXORDIUM 124 dig book that the whole of my ‘‘ Argonauts ” was written for the shadow-play by which Orpheus wins Eurydice to an interest in mortal joys and sorrows. Also—believe it!—I had proposed a similar play in Book III., to be called ‘* Heracles” or ‘‘ Theseus,” by performance of which Per- sephone should be moved, or Hades over- whelmed. But luckily I was myself overwhelmed first, and it never got a chance at Hades. Book II., then, and its Siamese twin, were written in Hawaii, Japan, China, Ceylon, and South India, where also I began Book III. That also I finished in the Burmese jungle and at Lamma Sayadaw Kyoung at Akyab. During this period I was studying the Buddhist law ; and its influence on the philo- sophy of the poem is as apparent as that of Hinduism on Book II. The summer of 1902 asked another kind of philosophy—the kind that goes with glacier travel in the Mustagh ‘Tagh. Orpheus slept. Book IV. was begun in Cairo on my way to England, and bears marks of confirmed Buddhism up to the death of Orpheus. 3ut the more I saw of Buddhism the less I liked it, and the first part of Book IV. is flatly contradicted by its climax. This is a pitiable sort of confession for a man to make ! What was I to do? I could not rewrite the whole in order to give it a philosophic unity. Gerald Kelly forcibly prevented me from throwing it into the river at Marlotte, though he admitted quite frankly that he could not read even through Book I. and did not see how any one could. Tell me, he said, conjuring the friendship of years, can you read it? Even a poet should be honest ; I confessed that I could not ! Taking it in sections, with relays and an ambulance, we could see no fault in it, how- ever. It is clumsily built; it is all feet and face; but you cannot make a Monster sym- metrical by lopping at him. Still, we cut down every possible excres- cence, doctored up the remains so as to look as much like a book as possible (until it is examined), and are about to let it loose on society. The remaining books all share this fatal lack of Architecture; but they are not so long; there is some incident, though not much; and they are proportionately less dull. Further, the scheme is no longer so ambitious, and the failure is therefore less glaring. I might have done like Burton and his Kasidah, and kept the MS. for twenty years (if I live so long), ever revising it. But (a) I should certainly not live twenty years if I had the accursed manuscript in all sorts and sizes of type and colour of ink and pencil to stalk my footsteps, and (4) I am literally not the man who wrote it, and, despise him as I may, I have no right to interfere with his work. But I will not be haunted by the ghost of a Banquo that another man has failed to lay; and this kind of ghost knows but one exorcism, One should bury him decently in fine fat type, and erect nice boards over him, and collect the criticisms of an enlightened press, and inscribe them on the tomb. Then he is buried beyond resurrection; oblivion takes him, and he will never haunt the author or anybody else again. Old Man of the Sea, these three years you have drummed your black misshapen heels upon me; I have had no ease because of you; I am bepissed and conskited of your beastliness ; and now you are drunk with the idea that you are finished and perfect, I shall roll you off and beat your brains out upon that hardest of flints, the head of the British Public. I am shut of thee. Allah forget thee in the day when he remembereth his friends ! August 14, 1904. EXORDIUM. From darkness of fugitive thought, From problems bewildering the brain, Deep lights beyond heaven unsought, Dead faces seen dimly in rain ; From the depths of Mind’s caverns, the fire Reclaims the old magical lyre ; The ways of creation are nought, If only, O mother, O Muse, I may measure Thy melodies in me again !